


Heroics & Back Pains

by tjstar



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Back Pain, Blood and Injury, Exhaustion, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Getting Together, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, M/M, Massage, Protective Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23066788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjstar/pseuds/tjstar
Summary: Geralt frowns, narrowing his eyes.“You want to say that you pulled me out of theswamp,risking your life just to save mine?”“Yeah, I did that,” Jaskier nods as he finally realizes that it was a terribly long way. “You were out like a light, and I just couldn’t watch my dear witcher die like that.”---Jaskier’s back hurts, but he thinks his pain is nothing compared to Geralt’s. He’s wrong.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 36
Kudos: 1014





	Heroics & Back Pains

“You’re not gonna fucking die today.”

This is what Jaskier has been repeating to himself within the past few hours; he would have lost his mind already if he kept silent. Geralt’s latest contract gone wrong leaving him bleeding in the swamp along with the bodies of the foglets* he has just killed. There were too many of them, and all of them were way too angry; one of them bit through Geralt’s shoulder, its tooth is now peeking out of the wound. This is what Jaskier can see as he crawls to Geralt, careful not to step into the bubbly poodles of dirt. Mud spills into his boots as he slides across the swampy surface. Geralt is unconscious, almost unnoticeable buried in the pile of dead foglets.

“Hold on, I’m coming!..”

Jaskier clenches his teeth as he kicks the nearest creature off of Geralt to try and shake him awake, to slap him across his cheeks, but he’s all cold and lifeless. Jaskier presses his ear to Geralt’s mouth, feeling a ghost of a breath and a ghost of a heartbeat on his neck. Too weak even for the witcher, probably. And Jaskier has no clue what elixir Geralt should drink to come to, so he just chokes on his curses as he shoves his arms underneath Geralt’s shoulders. Jaskier rolls up his sleeves and lifts Geralt up, but the lower half of his body remains pressed into the viscous filth, sinking slowly. 

“Oh gods.”

Jaskier can barely see his own ankles as the swamp sucks him in. 

“Geralt? Geralt!” happiness floods his chest when Geralt blinks — potion-induced blacks of his eyes have almost turned to their usual golden color. Jaskier’s heart is hammering as he waits for Geralt to get up, but he just growls and slips back into a peaceful embrace of a faint. “Fuck.”

Jaskier pushes another foglet with his shoulder, nearly gagging at the stench of its innards, but he’s preoccupied with freeing Geralt’s legs. He jostles the creatures with as much force as the rippled sludge under his feet lets him. Sweat trickles down the back of his neck, his hair sticks to his forehead when he finally rolls the last foglet off of Geralt. Jaskier is exhausted to the point he can’t blink away the colorful circles swimming in front of his eyes, ache settles deep in his bones. Geralt’s armor and his muscles are not helping him at all. Jaskier bends over, he slips his hands under Geralt’s armpits and hauls him away from the battlefield; he trips and falls, gets up and keels over again. 

“That was a nice fight, but we have to leave now, am I right? God, of course I am!..” Jaskier utters although he’s not sure if Geralt can hear him. But he used to think that Geralt always listens to his babbling, even when he tries his best to pretend that he doesn’t.

Jaskier has to hurry up, because this swamp is too bloodthirsty, and the wound in Geralt’s shoulder is surrounded with the halo of black threads; well, bloody mash never looks good. Jaskier tastes iron on his lips, wincing with every step but trudging down the swamp in attempts to find a solid ground. He sees Roach chewing grass behind the trees, and it seems so, so far away from them he wants to cry. 

But he can’t. 

He looks over his shoulder, not wanting to bump into yet another monster since the fog is still creating a veil above the swamp. Geralt’s weight makes both of them sink, and Jaskier has to hold his head above the foul waters, shoulders and back hunched. 

“Witness me, old man, I am The Wild,” Jaskier half sings half screams out when the sole of his boot hits the hardened surface. It takes couple more powerful jerks to get Geralt’s legs out of the swamp and lay him down. 

This is when it all comes down on him, he hugs his knees and howls like a hurt animal, letting his cries echo and bounce off of every tree. When he hears a soft huffing, he looks up and spots Roach, glancing at him with her kind eyes. She’s the smartest horse he has ever seen, but she’s not gonna help him get Geralt into the saddle. The blood looks black on his pale skin. Still shocked, Jaskier reaches for the saddle bag and takes the waterskin and a clean cloth. Jaskier doesn’t remember how poisonous the foglets’ teeth are, but he swears to himself, to God and to Geralt that he’s gonna learn the entire bestiary if they survive. He can only hope that Geralt’s mutations won’t let him catch an infection. At the moment, Geralt’s health bothers him more than his own throbbing muscles. Jaskier sighs and takes the fang out of the bleeding hole in Geralt’s shoulder and hurls it into the nearest bushes. 

Geralt opens his eyes when Jaskier wraps the cloth around his wound, tying the ends tightly. 

“Jaskier?”

“Geralt, oh, you’re alive!”

Geralt strikes him down with a fantastically logical question,

“Why wouldn’t I be?” 

“Because you…” Jaskier twists his wrists dramatically. “That lovely gang of foglets knocked you out unconscious. You were sinking like a rock, but don’t worry — your best friend,” he points at his own chest. “Came to rescue.”

Geralt frowns, narrowing his eyes. 

“You want to say that you pulled me out of the _swamp,_ risking your life just to save mine?” 

“Yeah, I did that,” Jaskier nods as he finally realizes that it was a terribly long way. “You were out like a light, and I just couldn’t watch my dear witcher die like that.”

And there’s the intonation he’s never heard before — Geralt is dazed and… Grateful? Jaskier could’ve sworn Geralt looked at him with respect before swatting all the emotions away. 

“Now write a song about it or something.”

Oh, he missed that.

“You’re inspiring me, so of course I won’t hesitate to do that,” Jaskier says, adding as much mockery to his tone as he can.

Geralt pulls on his usual fuck-off-bard face. 

*** 

Jaskier ignores the pain at first. 

Geralt is the one to ride Roach, keeping his pace slow so it feels almost comfortable for Jaskier. He’s working on his new ballad as he promised, about The White Wolf getting a new scar, about friendship that was bound to be iconic. A friendship which Geralt still denies — and Jaskier just tends to fall in love with everyone he meets on his way, but now it might have caught him a bit harder. He could’ve said he’s lovesick, masking his feelings with inappropriate jokes. 

He’d think more about this kind of a romance, but there’s an invisible dagger in the small of his back that digs deeper into his spine and makes him sway sideways. 

“What’s wrong?” Geralt asks him, irritated. “You stopped.” 

Jaskier forces himself for a smile. 

“Everything is just fine, I’m just… I’m just enjoying this nice weather.”

They spend the night in the inn; as soon as Jaskier flops down onto the hay-stuffed mattress, all the tiredness paralyzes him. A sharp pain shoots through his back as he rolls over onto his side. But then again, he silently watches Geralt stitching up his fresh wound without a single moan, then pouring an elixir all over the thick threads. It smells like acid; Jaskier always gets queasy when he gets to see Geralt patching himself up like a shitty tailor. 

So Jaskier’s back pain is _nothing_ compared to this.

***

He takes his words back when he wakes up in the morning. 

Jaskier lets out a prolonged “uh-huh” as he tries to sit up, because his back says a big fat _no._ He’s glad that Geralt doesn’t look at him at all, cleaning his armor in the corner of the room. Jaskier holds his breath to the point his lungs might burst, before pushing himself up with his elbows. His body has to adjust to every new position it seems — this is what you get for dragging a sturdy witcher with all of his metal outfit and with his swords across the swamp. 

Jaskier bites his knuckles before swinging his legs off the bed. 

“I’m heading to Toussaint,” Geralt says. “Gonna get a bruxa contract there. Are you staying?” 

“What? No, of course not! I’m gonna go with you!”

When Jaskier bends over to take his lute from the floor, he thinks his back is going to stay hunched for the rest of his life. With the blood pounding in his temples, he huffs out a curse before straightening his back and making sure that Geralt hasn’t heard that awful creaking noise. _‘Here you go, Jaskier,’_ he tells to himself. _‘You just started the chapter where Geralt stopped trying to get rid of you, so don’t ruin it with your whining.’_

“I’m waiting for you outside,” Geralt informs him before leaving the room. “Five minutes or less.” 

He’s so unflappable, as if he wasn’t dying in the middle of the swamp just yesterday.

Jaskier is almost envious, he wants to be as collected as Geralt in his eighties. But he can’t see anything optimistic in his future at the moment since the back pains hunt him already, when he barely hit his twenties.

“You can do this,” he reassures himself before getting up from the bed. “Oh, fun,” he mumbles, blinking away black dots swarming all around him. 

His back feels like an open wound, and Jaskier has to pull his shirt up to prove himself wrong — the skin is barely bruised right above the waistband of his pants. Jaskier just doesn’t want to miss his chance to travel with Geralt and learn more about vampires and other beasts. So he throws the strap of the case over his shoulder and walks as fast as he can.

***

Everything gets worse during their next inn-stay, when one of the men from the crowd slaps Jaskier’s back to encourage him. 

“Good job, bard!” 

His palm is as huge and as heavy as a shovel.

Jaskier isn’t sure what happens next, because there’s suddenly no air, he can’t open his eyes as he clutches his back with one hand and holds against the table with the other. The lute on his shoulder weighs like a dozen of stones; he can’t even move without jarring his sore muscles. It feels like somebody sticks hot nails and needles into his back, the tendrils of pain tatter his flesh open like old rags. But his listeners are drunk enough to not notice that he’s not feeling well, and Geralt is still in the stable with Roach. 

Jaskier plays two more songs and tries his best to stay awake. 

*** 

“What’s going on, fuck, Jaskier—”

“What?”

It’s such a surprise for Jaskier to find himself in Geralt’s grasp; Jaskier would have enjoyed that, but the pain in his lower back is so great he can only let out a moan. Geralt holds him, arm thrown around Jaskier’s shoulders protectively. From what Jaskier remembers, they’re not supposed to stop until the sunset. But Geralt doesn’t say a word of protest as they make a stop at noon; he helps Jaskier sit down onto the fallen tree. Jaskier can’t hold back a hiss, pressing his palm to his aching back and rubbing it, willing his pain to go away. 

“Does it hurt?” Geralt crosses his arms over his chest, already knowing the answer. Jaskier can read that between the wrinkles on his forehead. 

“A little,” he admits. 

“So “little” that you nearly collapsed?” 

Oh, great. He nearly passed out on Geralt then. 

“Just got a little dizzy.”

He vaguely remembers a bout of pain, the sound of hooves hitting the ground, and _Geralt’s hands on him._ Geralt hums, and sits down next to Jaskier, and suddenly shoves his palm under his shirt, making Jaskier gasp and almost fall over. 

“Stop fidgeting,” Geralt orders, massaging Jaskier’s rigid muscles. 

Jaskier bites down his lip and screws his eyes shut. An acute pain keeps torturing him, striking his back again and again as Geralt keeps poking and prodding the bumps on his sides and his shoulders. 

“What are you doing?” Jaskier whispers.

Another onslaught of pain makes him squeal. 

“You’ve overstrained your back muscles,” Geralt says. “I know how to help.”

“Oh, sure you do.”

Geralt takes a bottle of chamomile oil out of his bag, spreading it on his cold palms and rubbing Jaskier’s back again. Jaskier didn’t even know they owned that oil. 

It takes a lot of his energy not to break down right there and then. Geralt’s fingers are calloused and rough as they skim across Jaskier’s back, finding the source of pain and pressing there as if to squeeze the disease out of him. Jaskier braces himself for another stab, but there’s only the warmth spreading under his skin instead. The tight strings in his spine loosen, and Geralt continues his manipulations until Jaskier is about to purr like a well-fed cat. 

“Better?” 

“Uh-huh.”

Now Jaskier feels dumb. 

_Geralt cares about him._

Geralt doesn’t ask him to take his shirt off although Jaskier would’ve gladly done that for him — he’d get rid of all his clothes at once. Jaskier inhales sharply when there’s another spasm, but Geralt wipes it away along with the oil on his palm. Sharp pain dulls to the nagging one before dissipating completely — Jaskier feels his youth being rubbed back into him, and it’s such a thrilling sensation he wants to sing about it. Geralt huffs behind him, pressing his thumbs between Jaskier’s shoulder blades and massaging circles there. And Jaskier’s body reacts to these touches in Jaskier’s trademark manner. 

“Oh, yeah, _harder,_ that’s the right spot,” he blurts out before biting his tongue. 

“Is that a… Jaskier,” Geralt presses his forehead to Jaskier’s nape, smirking. “Can you stop thinking about sex for a second?” 

Jaskier tugs his shirt down to cover his groin. 

“I just started.” 

Then he pulls back and leans against Geralt, and feels that he _doesn’t mind_ Jaskier’s arousal at all. He can’t control himself when he’s sitting chest to back with Geralt, soaked in their weird intimacy. And he wants Geralt’s oily hand to give him that long-awaited relief, but Geralt continues to work on his back instead. As if that’s just a foreplay. 

Well, maybe that’s gonna be enough.

Well, maybe it’s not a hallucination, and Geralt’s palm slides down his pants. Jaskier would’ve never imagined that their first time was going to happen in the forest, during Geralt’s hunt for bruxa. Or that it was going to _happen_ after all. This is the truce both of them need before diving into another round of adventures, and Jaskier loves every minute of it, despite the itching of the insect bites and the smell of horse shit. 

Geralt puts his hair up in a bun and stretches lazily.

“Aren’t we going to cuddle?” Jaskier asks, tugging his oil-stained pants up.

The sun gleams in Geralt’s eyes as he replies,

“Let’s save that for the inn-stay.”

Jaskier still can’t believe that he somehow skipped that “just a friend” stage.

And his injured back was worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> i need more hurt/comfort moments between these two so this is it  
> thanks for reading!!  
> \---  
> *[foglet](https://thewitcher3.wiki.fextralife.com/Foglet)


End file.
